PLEASE READ: Final Project Status Update

I was contacted by Darren Parker on Friday. He had been trying for a couple of weeks to finalize the transfer of the project to me. However, things have not worked out as planned. Microsoft Legal had reservations about turning over this
project site to the community. While it may have been possible to try and work through those issues and do so, it would most likely have resulted in a long, drawn out process with no guarantee of the outcome we wanted. Both Darren and I agreed
that this was not worth the effort given that the Ms-PL license under which Sandcastle is published gives us, the community, the right to fork a new version and continue development by that means.

Forking a version was always an option, one that I was not keen to do while this site remained active though neglected. Pursuing the option to take ownership of the site was the better choice at that time. However, since that is no longer
possible and there will be a definite statement of discontinued support for this project site, I am now agreeable to continuing development on a forked version. As such, that is what will happen.

Darren is in the process of drawing up a statement that will be posted here on the home page of the Sandcastle project officially declaring the end of Microsoft's development and support of the project at this site. It will recommend going to the Sandcastle
Help File Builder project site here on CodePlex for all future updates and releases of the Sandcastle tools.

While I could create a new project to host the Sandcastle tools or reuse the existing Sandcastle Styles site, I have decided in the interest of simplicity to just make the Sandcastle tools code base a sub-project of the Sandcastle Help File Builder project.
It will remain separate from SHFB but will be distributed from there. As it will retain the ability to be used in a standalone fashion, this will allow those that wish to use the Sandcastle tools with their own tools and scripts the ability to do so
while benefitting from future fixes and new features.

Effective immediately, please post all Sandcastle tools related questions and work items on the Sandcastle Help File Builder project site (http://SHFB.CodePlex.com). The update that was supposed to have been
made here has been published there (Sandcastle 2.7.1.0 and SHFB 1.9.5.0). Source code for the Sandcastle tools has been merged into the SHFB source code tree. The content of the Sandcastle Styles site has been merged with the SHFB project and I
will eventually shut it down as it has served its purpose and is no longer required.

For a list of future enhancements and features planned for Sandcastle and the Sandcastle Help File Builder, see the
Future Enhancements and Features page at the SHFB project site.

I was contacted by Darren Parker on Friday. He had been trying for a couple of weeks to finalize the transfer of the project to me. However, things have not worked out as planned. Microsoft Legal had reservations
about turning over this project site to the community. While it may have been possible to try and work through those issues and do so, it would most likely have resulted in a long, drawn out process with no guarantee of the outcome we wanted. Both Darren and
I agreed that this was not worth the effort given that the Ms-PL license under which Sandcastle is published gives us, the community, the right to fork a new version and continue development by that means.

Forking a version was always an option, one that I was not keen to do while this site remained active though neglected. Pursuing the option to take ownership of the site was the better choice at that time. However,
since that is no longer possible and there will be a definite statement of discontinued support for this project site, I am now agreeable to continuing development on a forked version. As such, that is what will happen.

Darren is in the process of drawing up a statement that will be posted here on the home page of the Sandcastle project officially declaring the end of Microsoft's development and support of the project at this
site. It will recommend going to the Sandcastle Help File Builder project site here on CodePlex for all future updates and releases of the Sandcastle tools.

While I could create a new project to host the Sandcastle tools or reuse the existing Sandcastle Styles site, I have decided in the interest of simplicity to just make the Sandcastle tools code base a sub-project
of the Sandcastle Help File Builder project. It will remain separate from SHFB but will be distributed from there. As it will retain the ability to be used in a standalone fashion, this will allow those that wish to use the Sandcastle tools with their own
tools and scripts the ability to do so while benefitting from future fixes and new features.

Effective immediately, please post all Sandcastle tools related questions and work items on the Sandcastle Help File Builder project site (http://SHFB.CodePlex.com). I will
be releasing the update there that was supposed to have been made here later on today (Sandcastle 2.7.1.0 and SHFB 1.9.5.0). Source code for the Sandcastle tools will be made available on the new release's download page temporarily until I can get it properly
merged into source control. The content of the Sandcastle Styles site will also be merged with the SHFB project and I will eventually shut it down as it has served its purpose and is no longer required. Within a couple of weeks, I'll post a road map detailing
my future plans with regard to updates and new features for the Sandcastle tools.